Every Tuesday, discriminating viewers are confronted with a flurry of choices: new releases on disc and on demand, vintage and original movies on any number of streaming platforms, catalogue titles making a splash on Blu-ray or 4K. This twice-monthly column sifts through all of those choices to pluck out the movies most worth your time, no matter how you\u2019re watching.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n PICK OF THE WEEK: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Birth<\/em><\/strong><\/a>: <\/strong>When Jonathan Glazer\u2019s Sexy Beast<\/em> follow-up (a new addition to the Criterion Collection) hit theaters in 2004, the reviews tilted negative, the Manhattan milieu and slightly supernatural themes prompting unfavorable comparisons to Rosemary\u2019s Baby<\/em>. It\u2019s not only unfair, but inaccurate; <\/em>this is an inversion of that narrative, in which the pixie-cut female protagonist was the only sane person amongst a crowd of crazies. This time around, after some resistance, she has bought into the somewhat supernatural premise, and the people around her are trying to talk her down to earth. As such, the picture\u2019s success relies almost entirely on Kidman\u2019s performance\u2014specifically, the extent to which we see her thinking, deciding, realizing things as the character does\u2014and it\u2019s one of her best. Glazer also makes fine use of Anne Heche\u2019s unpredictable energy, and the automatic air of respectability and gravitas you get when you cast Lauren Bacall. And there may be no filmmaker who\u2019s made better use of Huston\u2019s whole genial patrician thing<\/em>, particularly in the perfect moment when that performance goes from meticulously controlled to absolutely unhinged. It\u2019s a perfectly modulated break with reality, and frankly, you can say the same<\/a> about Birth<\/em> itself. (Includes archival interviews, featurettes, trailer, and essay by Olivia Laing.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n ON 4K\/ BLU-RAY \/ DVD \/ VOD:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n One Battle After Another<\/em><\/strong><\/a>: <\/strong>The twist of watching Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s scarily prescient picture<\/a> at this specific moment is that certain touches that might have played like satire not too long ago \u2014 like the cabal of white supremacist power brokers in politics and business who are \u201cdedicated to making the world safe and pure\u201d \u2014 now feel like straightforward fact. The intensity of the dread Anderson is building throughout (underlined by the merciless plinking of Jonny Greenwood\u2019s score, the sound of an anxiety attack) is multiplied exponentially by the world it\u2019s being unleashed in, and as we watch military men kidnapping American civilians in broad daylight, it feels pressing and urgent in a way this filmmaker\u2019s work hasn\u2019t before. It\u2019s not a throwaway that we catch Bob watching The Battle of Algiers<\/em><\/a> on TV, but it doesn\u2019t feel aspirational, or hyperbolic. It simply feels that this, like that, was the movie for the moment. (Also streaming on HBO Max<\/em><\/a>.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n Roofman<\/em><\/strong><\/a>: <\/strong>Derek Cianfrance is not the first filmmaker you\u2019d think of to helm a lightweight combo of crime caper and romantic comedy \u2014 the director of Blue Valentine<\/em> and The Place Beyond the Pines<\/em> tends to trudge through weightier waters than that. And that might be why this one feels so sui generis<\/em>; he brings a sense of gravitas to what could have been a throwaway, aided immeasurably by the considerable chemistry and charisma of leads Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst, who play (respectively) a criminal on the lam and the single mom he falls for. We see all sorts of filmmakers trying to reanimate the cinema of the \u201870s with camera tricks and period music, but here\u2019s a director who\u2019s attempting the wild tonal swings and lived-in authenticity of that era, and pulling it off. (Also streaming on Paramount+<\/em><\/a>.) (Includes deleted and alternate scenes and featurettes.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n ON BLU-RAY \/ DVD \/ VOD:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Fackham Hall<\/em><\/strong><\/a>: <\/em><\/strong>Much was made last year of Akiva Schaffer and company somehow successfully rebooting<\/a> the Naked Gun <\/em>franchise, and deservedly so. The Zucker-Abrams-Zucker brand of big-screen spoofery \u2014 winking anachronisms, cheerful vulgarity, background gags, merciless overkill, and outright silliness \u2014 is so difficult to replicate that it was something of a miracle, so it\u2019s all the more shocking that director Jim O\u2019Hanlon and his five-man writing team pulled it off as well. Their targets are British period dramas in general and Downton Abbey<\/em> in particular, with Damian Lewis and Katherine Waterston as the lord and lady of the titular estate. Thomasin McKenzie (really showing her range last year, between this and The Testament of Ann Lee<\/em>) is delightfully game as their daughter, pressured to marry for money in order to save the family; Ben Radcliffe is charming as the con artist who is her one true love. The gags fly so fast and furious that the occasional clunker doesn\u2019t even matter; another joke will come along soon enough. (Includes deleted scenes.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n